SEPTEMBER 4, 1953

NEW YORK, Thursday—I came down from the country on Wednesday morning and walked into an apartment where much too much furniture had been dumped and all of it in the wrong places. When I get out what I don't need and the telephone people get through and I get some curtains hung and the furniture remaining here put in the right places, we will begin to live. At present I can only say it is complete chaos and anyone who is in the throes of moving will know just what I mean. The heat doesn't add to the ease of getting settled but I must say there is a wonderful breeze through from front to back of the apartment and once we are settled I don't think we will suffer.

The weatherman promises us more hot weather today but some rain over the weekend, for which I am grateful, but as I go to Colorado I suppose I shall find myself shivering every night and thinking of everyone back here and hoping they are just cooling off.

I brought my two little dogs down yesterday so they would get accustomed to the place where I am living but I think they will be very glad to go back to the country on Friday afternoon for a long weekend and run around in the woods. They don't like a back yard and walks on leashes. I live in constant terror that they will slip out when no one is looking but I hope we are safe for the next few days.

I was sent a good deal of material the other day by an organization called "Peace Builders." I gather this is a group with a good many Quakers and religious groups among the membership, and their suggestions seem to me good ones. They want to form a chain of open doors all over the United States where for brief vacations foreigners can spend one or two nights when they are travelling in our country to try to get acquainted with our people and have very little money with which to do this. The idea is that when you take in strangers you will learn from them and they in turn will learn from you and friendship and brotherhood will be a help toward world peace. There are many regulations about what students should do which make hitchhiking difficult, so this may be really helpful for some students who come over here on very limited budgets.

I will give you just one example for some of the types of people who have been helped. Robert Monnayes earned sufficient money to pay his way here on a six-month visa. Six or seven weeks of his time was spent in a Quaker work camp at "Boys' Far," Elk View, West Virginia, in consideration of which the American Friends Service Committee paid his passage back to Paris. He was a psychology student in the Sorbonne in Paris and came from Toulon. He wanted to study international relations. He managed to get around Europe quite thoroughly and then he decided to come here and see all that he could of new methods and ideas as they are exemplified in our country.

E.R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)